In linguistics, a calque /kælk/ or loan translation is a word or
phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or
root-for-root translation. Used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow
a word or phrase from another language while translating its
components so as to create a new lexeme in the target language.
"Calque" itself is a loanword from the French noun calque ("tracing;
imitation; close copy"); the verb calquer means "to trace; to copy, to
imitate closely"; papier calque is "tracing paper".[1] The word
"loanword" is itself a calque of the German word Lehnwort, just as
"loan translation" is a calque of Lehnübersetzung.[2]
Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation
than does an untranslated loanword because, in some cases, a similar
phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less
likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite
different from that of the borrowing language or when the calque
contains less obvious imagery.
Calquing is distinct from phono-semantic matching.[3] While calquing
includes semantic translation, it does not consist of phonetic
matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound of the borrowed word
through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existing word or
morpheme in the target language).

the phraseological calque, with idiomatic phrases being translated
word-for-word.
the syntactic calque, with syntactic functions or constructions of the
source language being imitated in the target language.
the loan-translation, with words being translated morpheme-by-morpheme
or component-by-component into another language.
the semantic calque, with additional meanings of the source word being
transferred to the word with the same primary meaning in the target
language. That is also called a "semantic loan".
the morphological calque, with the inflection of a word being
transferred.

That terminology is not universal. Some authors call a morphological
calque a "morpheme-by-morpheme translation".[5]
Loan blend[edit]
Loan blends or partial calques translate some parts of a compound, but
not others.[6] For example, the Irish digital television service
SaorviewSaorview is a partial calque of the UK Freeview service, translating
the first half of the word from English to Irish but leaving the
second half unchanged. Other examples are: liverwurst (< German
Leberwurst), apple strudel (< German Apfelstrudel).
Examples[edit]
Main article: List of calques
Phraseological calque: "flea market"[edit]
The common English phrase "flea market" is a phraseological calque of
the French "marché aux puces" ("market with fleas").[7] Other
national variations include:

Loan translation: translatio and traductio[edit]
The
LatinLatin word translatio ("a transferring") derives from trans,
"across" + latus, "borne". (Latus is the past participle of ferre, "to
carry".)
The
Germanic languagesGermanic languages and some
Slavic languagesSlavic languages calqued their words
for "translation" from the above
LatinLatin word, translatio, substituting
their respective Germanic or Slavic root words for the
LatinLatin roots.
The remaining
Slavic languagesSlavic languages instead calqued their words for
"translation" from an alternative
LatinLatin word, traductio, itself
derived from traducere ("to lead across" or "to bring across", from
trans, "across" + ducere, "to lead" or "to bring").[8]
The West
Slavic languagesSlavic languages adopted the "translatio" pattern. The East
Slavic languagesSlavic languages (except for Belarusian and Ukrainian) and the South
Slavic languagesSlavic languages adopted the "traductio" pattern.
The Romance languages, deriving directly from Latin, did not need to
calque their equivalent words for "translation". Instead, they simply
adapted the second of the above two alternative
LatinLatin words,
traductio, literally meaning "leading across" or "putting across".
Thus, Aragonese: traducción; Catalan: traducció; French: traduction;
Italian: traduzione; Portuguese: tradução; Romanian: traducere; and
Spanish: traducción.
The English verb "to translate" similarly derives from the Latin
translatio, itself derived from transferre, "to transfer": in this
case, "transferred" (translatus) from one language to another.[8] Were
the English verb "translate" calqued, it would be "overset", akin to
the calques in other Germanic languages.
Following are the Germanic- and Slavic-language calques for
"translation", as discussed above:[8]

Semantic calque: mouse[edit]
The computer mouse was named in English for its resemblance to the
animal. Many other languages have extended their own native word for
"mouse" to include the computer mouse.

^ Overzetting (noun) and overzetten (verb) in the sense of
"translation" and "to translate", respectively, are considered
archaic. While omzetting may still be found in early modern literary
works, it has been replaced entirely in modern Dutch by vertaling.